Friday, 22 April 2011

A packed Good Friday service

We made our plans very carefully and catered for about 70 - tea, coffee, hot cross buns, hymn books. All the surrounding churches were invited. We knew something special was happening when two young men walked in off the street and wanted to know if we were having a special service. They lived on City Road but worshiped in Handsworth.

Then the others began to arrive. First in ones and twos, then whole families. There was a frantic effort to find more chairs, we had to start finding the odd seat here and there. Then we had to make the mircophone work harder so that the service could be heard in the overflow foyer. Fortunately we had a reserve supply of UHT milk. Shortly after the service started there was not one vacant chair and we had run out of hymn books.

We always pray for a full church and we learnt today that being full could create problems. A couple of years ago we had a special church meeting to discuss closure. This was a day we thought we would never see.

We sang some lovely hymns and heard again the awesome story of Good Friday. It was wonderful to share with our friends at City Road Baptists, St Germains, Christ Church, and people from several other churches. A great morning and a fantastic start to the Easter break.